Variabilidade espaço-temporal da condutividade elétrica aparente do solo obtida por sensor portátil de contato direto

• Autor(a) principal: Medeiros, Wilker Nunes
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/3637
• topic: Agricultura de precisão; Condutividade elétrica; Solos; Precision Agriculture; Electrical conductivity; Soils; CNPQ::CIENCIAS AGRARIAS::ENGENHARIA AGRICOLA

Precision agriculture (PA) is a management of agricultural production systems technique that seeks to explore the spatial variability in order to raise the efficiency of the production process and minimize impacts to the environment. Among the tools with the potential to aid in the management of agricultural activity when the PA is adopted, there is the apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa), designed to measure the spatial variability of soil characteristics with fast, high resolution and low cost, identifying areas with similar characteristics. However, ECa is affected by a group of factors that act simultaneously on the soil and that change in space and time, for example the texture, density, soil moisture content, ionic concentration in the soil solution and organic matter, which complicates the interpretation of results. Seeking to understand whether the spatial structure of this attribute is maintained over time and under different soil conditions, this work aimed to analyze the spatial and temporal variability of the ECa, which was obtained by a portable direct contact sensor in two areas with soils of different textures. After a preliminary analysis that identified the spatial variability of ECa in each area, 50 sampling units were demarcated where the ECa was determined in 20 different dates in the soil layers of 0-20 cm, 0-40 cm, and 0-60 cm deep. The water content of the soil was determined in the 0-20 cm on the same dates that the ECa was determined. Soil samples were also collected in each sampling unit for chemical and physical characterization. The spatial variability and temporal stability of the ECa was analyzed during the study period, in addition to its relations with the physical and chemical attributes of the soil. In both fields, the ECa showed high temporal stability, and its spatial distribution pattern has remained largely unchanged throughout the period, regardless of the soil moisture condition, which was different in each evaluation. Moreover, the ECa had significant correlations with various soil chemical attributes of agronomic interest and also with granulometric fractions, thereby demonstrating its high potential as a tool for identifying regions with different characteristics within the same area. Thus, there exists the possibility of using the ECa in the generation of management zones to be operated by means of precision agriculture.